JOHOR BARU: Tens of thousands of people were stuck in long queues at all entry points around the country, as the entire immigration system crashed again following a major glitch.
Immigration officers were left frantically trying to clear locals and foreigners manually as all computer-based systems were down for five hours between 4.30am and 9.30am yesterday.
It was the second major crash in just over a month. A similar incident left thousands stranded for about two hours on April 23.
ALSO READ : Frustrated cross-border commuters forced to wait in stifling heat
While many complained that they were stuck from 4.30am, Immigration Department director-general Datuk Zakaria Shaaban said the incident happened at about 5am and lasted until 8.45am due to a technical issues at the Malaysian Immigration Systems (MyIMMs) data centre.
“The system was back online after rectifying work was carried out. The system was not hacked. The MyIMMs system is old and I cannot ensure that such a problem will not recur,” he said.
“The MyIMMS system is already 30 years old. Problems are bound to happen.”
A new system, known as the National Integrated Immigration System (NIISe), is supposed to replace MyIMMs by 2028.
Zakaria said such disruptions may recur until the NIISe system is up fully.
“We will endure them until the NIISe system is ready,” he said.
Earlier this month, Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, during a visit to Johor, said the vendor of MyNIISe had been told to prepare mitigation plans ahead of the start of the Johor Baru-Singapore Rapid Transit System (RTS) Link operations next year.
The government, he said, is committed to minimising any form of technical disruption in the new system.
A Home Ministry official said the latest disruption affected most of the 114 checkpoints nationwide.
Malaysia has a total of 56 entry points via sea, 30 via land and 28 airports.
The official said long queues were reported at both the land checkpoints in Johor as it was “peak time” for tens of thousands of Malaysians rushing to Singapore for work.
“We had to redeploy all our personnel to man manual counters at the bus halls, motorcycle and vehicles lanes.
“Not only were our autogates down, even our facial recognititon systems were also out,” the official said, adding that additional security personnel were also deployed to maintain order at the checkpoints.
